by Falon Gold
I went back to Anna’s and made a personal call to Dr. Blank for her. She set up an appointment for a session next week. Completely delighted with that, she hung up then jumped me again. We celebrated her making an appointment by making love long into the night. I didn’t know people partied for starting therapy, but I sure as hell put my all into it.
The next morning, it was even harder to go to work, leaving her in the bed sleeping with the alarm set in case she decided to go in to the salon. She didn’t have to go at all if she didn’t want to. Thinking, It must be nice to set your own hours, I kissed her tenderly on the forehead. She mumbled my name then settled back down. I almost got back in the bed with her who obviously wanted me there.
It was something about my name on this woman’s lips that did it for me, but I left for work because one day, I have to support my own family. They’d need more financial stability than the couple hundred grands I had in a nest egg would provide. If Anna ever wanted to be a stay at home mom, I would make that possible. It was time to take Hayden up on meeting his broker for investing.
By lunch time, I had gotten in touch with the broker and begged Hayden to let me off work for the rest of the day to go home to my girl. He cautioned me to make the best of my half day because I wouldn’t be getting another unless I was dead, dying, or bleeding. I double-timed it out of there.
*********
Earlier that morning
~Anna~
The dagblasted clock howled in my ear at ten. Slamming a hand down on its top was purely for retaliation for the rude awakening. I actually had to roll over and flip the off switch on the other side of the monstrosity. Who the heck thought up clocks? God, they should be dug up and shot. I was pretty dang sure the inventor was already dead. The prick.
After rolling to the edge of the queen-sized bed, I performed my morning routine but left the makeup and curlers under the sink, threw my hair in a ponytail, then put on some shorts and a halter top before going outside to sit on the first porch step with a cup of coffee. Monday wasn’t a busy day for the salon and I had lawn work to get done. Somehow.
I spent most of my time staring longingly at Roland’s empty driveway. The urge to call and hear his voice kept pecking at me while I played back and forth with the option of calling Kay to ask Hayden to cut my grass for a fee the following weekend. A teenager appeared like a vision at the end of my street with a push mower and carrying a gas can.
It was more one fluke to add to many I’d experienced since moving here, including Kay’s list with Roland’s therapist’s name at the top. When he called the doctor at home and got me an appointment, I certainly thanked him for that last night, and had the ache in places like my cheeks to prove it.
Since I recognized the kindred spirit in a hustler when I saw one and helped them out as much as I could, I waved the kid down, striking a deal with him to mow my lawn for twenty-five dollars every week. Poor Alex Daniel’s cocoa skin was already sweating bullets, so I gave him a bottle of water and a hat to shield his face from the blazing sun. Today would’ve been a good one to have cloud cover but not a single cloud floated in the sky.
While he mowed, I went into town and bought a rake and large trash bags, intending to get up the grass clippings and haul them curbside for the trashman. We had filled a bag a piece in the backyard when I heard Roland’s truck in his drive. I swung my rake up to add to my pile of clippings. The rake seemed heavier than usual. Instead of glancing around to catch a much-needed glimpse of Roland, I looked down at the tool in my hand.
A green slender body was intertwined in the rake’s teeth. When a tail curled up the handle I held, I realized that it was a freaking snake that had swept up along with the grass clippings. After pitching the snake and rake one way, I went in another direction at a high rate of speed, screaming, “Run! It’s a snake!” I repeated that several times so Alex would save himself before I slammed one of the back doors shut.
While locking it in case snakes had grown hands since I last encounter with one, I promised myself to never go in my back yard ever again and could hear Alex cracking up through the doors instead of running like I told him to. Obviously, he wasn’t afraid of a snake and that was good because the only way I was letting him in the house was if he went around to the front door. With my heart beating wildly, I planted my back against the barrier between me and creepie-crawlies. Someone knocked. I jumped.
“Go around to the front, Alex!”
“It’s not, Alex,” Roland reported. “And I have two things that belong to you. I’d like to give them back please.”
Alex went off on another hail of laughter. Come to think of it, Roland seemed to have a good bit of mirth in his voice too. Oh, he wouldn’t knock on my door with my rake and that snake in his hands. I didn’t toss them that far into his yard… I don’t think.
“Roland, I swear to God if you have that damn snake…” I paused for effect, didn’t think I had to finish my sentence for him to understand what would happen next if he didn’t catch my drift.
“Anna, come out and let me explain to you the difference in snakes.” Fuck that!
“There is no difference, Roland, and if there is, I don’t want to know it. I want you to kill it dammit!” And then I realized something. “Dammit, I haven’t cursed since yesterday!” Fucking snakes were ruining the roll I started when Roland brought Nathan over. I wasn’t going to be the reason that Nathan’s first word was ‘fuck’.
“Some snakes are good for the property by eating rodents, baby. We need them.” Had Roland lost his damn mind?
“If it has teeth or fangs, it bites, and I don’t get bit unless you’re the one doing the biting. I don’t care if it’s a snake, a rodent, or a dog. If it isn’t paying part of the mortgage or pushing a lawn mower, it doesn’t get to live here and get a chance to bite me! Now, kill the damn snake, Roland!” That was all I had to say or wanted to hear on that subject.
Chapter Fourteen
~Roland~
Laughter bubbled up out of my chest and bent me over at the waist. Anna was so serious about her bills being paid even the creatures had to chip in some coins or ship out. I was right to take my ass to work this morning and was wiping tears when I stood back up on her shady back patio. The second bedroom and laundry room extended out on each side of the house to enclose the concrete porch and double back doors.
“I’ll kill the snake if you come out and let me explain some things to you. Deal, Anna?”
“No deal!” shot through the door. “Just kill the damn thing!”
I held the rake in one hand by the handle, the grass snake in the other hand by the neck. “I promise it’ll take me two seconds to say what I have to then kill it.”
“No, Roland!”
“Sweetheart, I promise it’s harmless, nothing more than free pest control. I won’t let it touch you, and what I need to tell you is important for you to know in case I’m not here the next time you sweep up a snake with a rake then throw both on my deck for me to deal with just as I get home to change and spend some time with you.”
Not two minutes after I had gotten home, a loud thump on the deck brought me out the bedroom that I was going to change clothes in. I left my fatigues on and went to see what was going bump in the day time. Imagine my surprise to find a snake and a rake, and hearing Anna scream bloody murder as she jetted in the house.
I knew where the rake and snake had come from right then. Besides, I didn’t have any other neighbors. Only four houses stood in the whole neighborhood. Three were on this side of the street. Another home was being erected a good distance down the block.
“There’ll be no next time I’m in that back yard because I’m not going out there again!” she yelled. “Now, go deal with the snake already… please!”
Alex snorted.
He wasn’t making it easy for me to be serious. “Sweetheart, you’re not being realistic about never coming in your back yard again though I know you’re scared. You’ll have to come back here for so
me reason or another. I promise to get you a privacy fence built and cut the grass myself from now on if you come out and let me talk to you. I need you to trust me, baby.”
“Well, when you strike bargains and say things like that… Okay, Roland, but if I get bit or that snake gets loose in the next four seconds, you’re dying in its place! I promise I’ll survive its venom long enough to take your gorgeous ass out.”
I believed her who loved a bargain and was a true survivor. “Deal, Anna. Now, come out please.”
The right door cracked open. She projected her voice through the slit, “Back up, Roland. I’m not going anywhere near that thing.”
Snickering my ass off along with Alex, I backed up a few steps in my combat boots. “Far enough?”
She stuck her head out the door, her face flushed in a brilliant red. “No, you got about a mile to go.”
More hilarity erupted from me like a volcano. “A mile apart isn’t a good range for talking.”
“Call me on the phone then.”
Alex fell on the ground, sniggering his skinny ass off.
I gave her ten more feet. “Good enough?”
“Maybe,” she tiptoed out the door, coming no farther than the porch.
I held up the snake and pointed its head in her direction. “You see how small his head is?”
She backpedaled then nodded.
“That’s because he’s not poisonous and likes critters better than he does you, Anna, so he’s a friend. Snakes with arrow-shaped heads or have red stripes next to yellow stripes on their body are poisonous. I rather you ran from them than tried to kill them. If you have to kill one, it’s good to have a shovel to chop them up with. I’ll get you one tomorrow. Can I let him go now?”
“No!” She squinted her eyes. “That wasn’t the deal. You’re supposed to kill him, or he’ll come back. He needs to be made an example of for the other no-shoulders that might slither over here.”
“No-shoulders? That’s a new one. I’m going to have to use that.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard that one while living in Georgia.”
Alex walked up next to me. “Give it to me, Mr. Flynn. I’ll kill it.” “You should see about Miss Harp. I think she had a baby heart attack before running away.” He’d introduced himself when I walked over and sniggered some more at his own joke, which made me laugh.
Anna scrunched up her face because she was not loving being the butt of his joke. I passed both snake and rake to Alex, who seemed like a good kid possibly going through the same hard times as Anna and I had during our teen years. I knew that she and I both would do what we could to lessen his plight until he could do something good with his life.
Alex vanished around the house.
I advanced on Anna. “You okay, babe?”
“No,” she lamented then jumped me.
I was ready for her, catching her against me. “I got you.”
“I know,” she whispered, staring at my mouth.
“How do you know, beautiful woman?”
“Because you’re a good man with a good heart. There’s no way in hell my ex-fiancée and brother would’ve been at my home and I didn’t tear into their asses until I felt better about what they had done. Normally, I’d have been pissed at you for not tearing into their asses, and I certainly wouldn’t date me because I curse too much, run too much, afraid of damn near everything, and I’m too rough around the edges. And yet, you’re right here with me. Everything about you is good and that makes me want to be better.”
“You’ve always wanted to be better, Anna, or you’d be like your mother. You wouldn’t have so many ways to take care of yourself, and you’re right here with me too. Do you see any cuts on me from your rough edges?”
She shook her head.
“That’s right, sweetheart, and I’ve heard stories from Kay about how much you hate when the people you love are hurt and you often try tearing into people’s asses on your loved ones’ behalf, but you didn’t tear into anybody’s ass yesterday. You took the same care of Nathan that Lara does, and then you complimented her on it. Even if you backpedal sometimes as we all do when things get scary, you’re still moving forward in life, and I am so proud of you for that, but I’m not perfect either. Sometimes, I can’t stop myself from trying to fix someone’s bad day, hoping it will balance out the many bad days I’ve given, which usually turned into someone’s last day on earth. You can’t get much worse than being a killer whether you’re licensed by the government to kill or not, and if you repeat that, I’ll be in big trouble.”
Her expression changed to suspicious… or she smelled something foul. “I’m not one of your pet projects you take on to make yourself feel better about being a sanctioned sniper, am I? Because if I am, that would be really fucked up when I’ve spent the last month falling in love with you, desperately wanting to be with the only man that I wanted to get to know better from the moment we met. When I’m not around you, I can’t seemed to think of anything but you. You’re the only man I don’t want anything from… but your heart. The only man who makes me jealous of potential women in your bed. You’re the only man I’ve missed so badly I thought someone had cut off one of my limbs.”
She caressed the hair at the back of my head. “You’re the only man that I knew was too good for me but I’m going to hold onto anyway because letting you go hurts more than I ever imagined. The only man I want to walk into the rest of my life with because you know what I need before I do is you. I want to give you what you need too, and it wasn’t a coincidence that you forgave your brother and ex-fiancée enough to invite them to your house then showed up on my doorstep with their child. You wanted me to see firsthand what I wouldn’t hurt a child. You wanted me to realize that I wouldn’t hurt someone weaker than me, and I do realize it, so thank you.”
I was a little shocked that she hadn’t judged me for my sins committed on this country’s behalf but not so shock that she guessed my motives for showing up with Nathan out of the blue, and I certainly hope she didn’t let me go again. “You definitely love me.”
She grinned. “I definitely love you, and I like loving you.” Well, that was a statement that was as important as national security in my book.
My chest swelled until it felt as if it was going to burst. “And I definitely love you, Anna. Because you’re the only woman I would tear into somebody’s ass for. You’re the only woman whose needs consume me so completely even my nightmares and Cade’s and Lara’s betrayal can’t find enough room in my psyche to hurt me. You’re the only woman I’ve ever thought about stalking just to make sure you were okay. If I have my way, you’ll be the last woman I love, the first and last woman I move in with, and the only woman I’ll marry and have children with if you want to. That last one is not a deal breaker though. We’ll grow old together and become better together, so if all that makes you a pet project, then you’re the ultimate one that every heterosexual man looking for a partner for life hopes to work on.”
“You definitely love me.” She grinned harder, nuzzling my nose with hers.
“I definitely love you, Anna, almost from the moment we met.”
“Then, I’ll help you work on not feeling so bad for getting rid of the bad guys. These days, it seems like the bad guys outnumber the good guys a million to one. It’s just like you to ignore your part in making the world better and worry about the last day you given someone who deserved to die. I know you don’t want the credit for what you’ve done for this country or you’d be an arrogant prick always boasting about your number of kills. I know people like that for real, but somebody has to do what needs to be done to stand up for the rest of us who are weak, Roland. You and I know what it feels like to be failed.”
I touched her cheek. “You know what it feels like to stand up for the weaker too. Kay’s bully didn’t put herself down, and it’s just like you to concentrate on what you think as flaws and totally ignore your strengths. There’s so much good inside you, Anna, it’s scary that y
ou don’t see it when I do, but I’ll spend my life showing you the good in you until my last day. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t. You have my heart.”
“Well, you stole my heart, you beautiful man, but I don’t want it back. I know it’s safe with you.” She had no intentions of giving such a fragile and damaged part of her to anybody, so a little stealing was in order.
“And it always will be safe with me, Anna. I know what happens when a heart is mishandled.”
“I’ll keep your heart safe too, big boy.”
“I know, and that’s why my world is complete now.”
“Mine too, Roland.” Anna knotted her arms tightly around my neck and pressed her mouth to mine.
Alex gagged from somewhere in the distance.
She giggled. “He’s paying me back for when I gagged during one of Kay’s and Hayden’s sappy lovers’ session. I thought it would be funny when I did it.”
“If you keep kissing Mr. Flynn around your kids, you’re going to experience a lot more payback, Miss Harp,” Alex commented wryly.
I looked deep into Anna’s eyes. “I can handle a little gagging every other minute in the future.”
“So can I, Roland,” she responded before kissing me again. I knew she could handle anything thanks to Shelly’s mishandling of her heart. It actually strengthened Anna, made her a protector instead of perpetuating the vicious cycle of being an abuser.
I knew the rest of my life had arrived and took Anna inside the house, leaving the rest of the yard cleanup to Alex. After we made love for most of the day, early the next morning, I was making us toast and coffee in the kitchen when someone pecked at the front door. Since I had no clothes on, I went in the bedroom to get Anna to answer the door while I dressed.
She was already slinging on the robe she’d unearthed from a box yesterday morning. She went out of the room asking, “Who is it?”